Snoop & Martha’s Super Bowl Ad Rings Death Knell Of Cannabis Coolness

There was a time when cannabis had something to do with the counterculture, when smoking weed involved expanding your mind and getting into super cool music and art that the lame squares in the mainstream didn’t understand. There was a time when cannabis was cool.

What was the most uncool feature of the ad? Was it the puns such as “purple cushy throw pillows” and “can-of-bisque” which insulted the intelligence of even someone who considers How High the peak of comedic wit? Was it the fact that Snoop Dogg got second billing to Martha Stewart in a weed ad?

No, we think it was probably the fact that Snoop Dogg, a former counterculture hero for which smoking weed was once an act of defiance, was cast in an ad which shamelessly tries to exploit that status and sell “unlimited data” and “taxes and fees included” cell phone plans to his fans while also assuring non-fans that he’s now a non-threatening bespectacled B-list celebrity.

And with that, officially, weed isn’t cool anymore. That doesn’t mean it’s uncool. Drinking lemonade isn’t uncool. Neither is wearing T-shirts or taking a walk or owning a fish. But they’re not cool either. They’re neutral, and now so is marijuana.

The plant which has been considered sacred by some cultures, is used as a medicine in many others, and has been part of the counterculture fringe in just about all of them, including, recently, hip-hop, hippy, beatnik, and jazz circles, is now used to cell cell phone plans.

On the plus side, that probably has something to do with the fact that you’re a lot less likely to go to jail for possessing weed then you were in the past. So, you will now be uncool and out of jail, which we suppose is a fair trade-off.